Keyword stuffing is the practice of over-using a specific word or phrase in order to generate higher search engine placement and more traffic. When search engines were first designed to sort through millions of pages on the Internet, they would scan articles for a specific word or phrase. As a result, companies began stuffing words into articles, hoping that a higher keyword density would generate more traffic. Unfortunately, many of these articles contained an abundance of keywords but little useful information.

To combat keyword stuffing, software engineers redesigned the search engine algorithms to make them friendlier for users. Instead of targeting specific words, the engines began searching for keywords, related phrases and synonyms that would ordinarily appear in quality content. Google, for example, revamped its engine to search the Internet for articles and pages that contained not only keywords but also supportive text. As a result, higher quality content began ranking higher on Google searches. This turned out to be great for the consumer and great for Google.

Strangely, it is hard to fool Google without writing a good quality article. Trying to force synonyms and related words into an article can be difficult; it is actually easier to create good content rather than try to fool a sophisticated search engine such as Google. The tactic of using keyword-stuffed articles no longer works as well as it once did. Lucky for all of us, quality content that Google does like is also more likely to appeal to your target audience and increase your sales conversions.

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on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 11:00 am and is filed under Online Marketing.
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